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I. ESSAY ON THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY. 
II. AN APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN. 
III. A FEW WORDS ON PROHIBITION. 



BY 



Edward Thomson, m.a., 



PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY IN BALDWIN UNIVERSITY. 



Temperance Pamphlet. 



EDWARD THOMSON, M. A., 

PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY IN BALDWIN UNIVERSITY. 



CONTENTS: 

I. Essay on the Effects of Alcohol upon Society. 
II. An Appeal to Young Men. 
III. A Few Words on Prohibition. 



CINCINNATI: 4 



PRINTED BY HITCHCOCK AND WALDEN. 
1874. 



HVs- 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, 

BY EDWARD THOMSON, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 






AN ESSAY 



ON 



The Effects of Alcohol upon Society. 



WE are to consider an evil that has darkened the history of 
every age, and cursed the inhabitants of every land ; one 
that has blighted many a genius, and crushed many a noble spirit. 
It has robbed the family circle of its charms, and destroyed the 
social affections. It has deprived youth of beauty and vigor, 
and made dishonorable the gray hairs of age. It has entered 
the palaces of kings, and defiled legislative and judicial assem- 
blies. It has made miserable the mansions of the rich, and 
fiendish the hovels of the poor. 

Statesmen and philosophers, heroes and poets, have been 
cursed by its influence. Wherever it has prevailed, among any 
nation or community, it has had a tendency to produce physical 
degeneracy, mental imbecility, and moral degradation. And yet 
it stalks abroad through our own beloved land, unprevented, to 
any great extent, by the force of civil law, and undenounced, by 
the majority of the people. 

With these general remarks, we shall proceed to trace out the 
effects of alcohol upon society. And, first, as a physical evil. 

The eminent English scientist, Dr. Wm. B. Carpenter, Presi- 
dent of the British Association, etc., has classified the diseases 
produced by alcohol as follows : 

1. Diseases of the Alimentary Canal. 

i. Irritation and inflammation of the mucous membrane of the stomach. 

2. Inflammatory Gastric Dyspepsia. 

3. Disorders of the intestinal mucous membrane. 



4 THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY. 

II. Diseases of the Liver. 

i. Congestion. 

2. Acute and chronic inflammation. 

III. Diseases of the Kidneys. 

IV. Diseases of the Skin. 

V. General Disorders of Nutrition. 

i. Tendency to deposition of fat. 

2. Diminished power of sustaining injuries. 

3. Liability to epidemic diseases. 

4. Gout and rheumatism. 

5. Diseases of the heart and arteries. 

VI. Abridgment of Life by Intemperance. 

Dr. Alfred S. Taylor, F. R. S., in his work on Toxicology, pre- 
pared with special reference to the medico-legal practice, calls 
habitual alcoholic intoxication chronic poisoning, and says : 

"After death, morbid changes are discovered in various organs ; the liver 
is especially affected. This organ is commonly enlarged, and of a lighter 
color than natural. It is called the 'nutmeg, or drunkard's liver.' It is not 
unusual to find the kidneys in a state of granular degeneration. 
Alcohol is undoubtedly absorbed, and may be detected in the blood, urine, 
and tissues." 

Dr. N. S. Davis, President of the Chicago Medical College, 
recently instituted a series of sphygmographic observations on 
the effects of alcohol on the circulation. He thus sums up the 
results of his experiments in the Chicago Medical Examiner: 

" 1. Its presence in the blood directly interferes with the normal play of 
vital affinities and cell-action, in such a manner as to diminish the rapidity 
of nutrition and disintegration, and, consequently, to diminish the dependent 
functions of elimination, calorification, and innervation, thereby making a 
positive organic sedative instead of a diffusible stimulant, as is popularly 
supposed both in and out of the profession. 

" 2. Alcohol itself acts in the system exclusively as a foreign substance, 
incapable of assimilation or decomposition by the vital functions, and is 
ultimately excreted or eliminated without chemical change." 

This is the language of, perhaps, as high medical authority 
as there is in our land. 

It is a fact in science, well-known to all who have studied 
physiology, that the organs of the human body are incapable of 



THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY. 5 

digesting and receiving nourishment from any compounds other 
than those which are put up by processes of growth, or, as sci- 
entists usually term them, ascending processes. And when sub- 
stances which are the result of a process of decay (and the fer- 
mentation process is a process of decay) are introduced into the 
system, they act merely as foreign substances, incapable of 
assimilation or decomposition by the vital functions. 

The most nourishing, as many say, of alcoholic tonics (the 
light wines, ale, beer, porter, etc.) are not nourishing at all, for 
the simple reason that all the real nourishment — all the sugar 
that was in the fruit, and all the starch that was in the grain — 
has been lost in transformation, and all the substances which 
can be found, by the strictest chemical analysis, in any of the 
alcoholic liquors, are pure alcohol, carbonic-acid, and water: none 
of which can give any real strength to the human system. 

I call your attention to another scientific fact, in this connec- 
tion. The improper use of any organ weakens and debilitates, 
and finally destroys, its capacity for normal action. 

So the habitual introduction into the digestive organs of a 
substance which they are incapable of decomposing and assimi- 
lating, produces constant irritation and inflammation of the mu- 
cous membrane, until finally the stomach and intestines are 
worn out by unnatural use. Thus, as the capacity for the diges- 
tion of ordinary food is diminished, there is a corresponding 
diminution of the natural appetite for such food, and a corre- 
sponding increase in the appetite for unnatural food. Thus, with 
a rapidly decreasing capacity for sustaining the constant waste 
of the system by the ordinary process of nutrition, the vitality 
of the system is rapidly diminished, and premature death ensues. 
Sixty thousand drunkards die annually in the United States. 
All these die prematurely ; that is, in some cases, one, two, 
three, in others, five, ten, twenty, years before their physical 
nature would have been exhausted had they lived sober men. 
And therefore the country loses, by their deaths, just that 
many years of honorable labor ; amounting in the aggregate, in 
our own land, to millions of dollars a year. So much for the 
effects of alcohol, in a physical way, upon the nation. 



6 THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY. 

Let us next consider its injurious effects upon the mental 
part of society. Alcohol is classed, in all recent works on Toxi- 
cology, along with opium, prussic-acid, and chloroform, as a 
brain poison. Though it attacks other organs — the liver, the kid- 
neys, and interferes with circulation and digestion — yet the great 
seat of its action is the brain. We have all of us seen a priori 
proof of this in the perverted vision and deranged reasoning 
of a drunken man, and it has been confirmed to men of science 
by post-mortem examinations. 

Dr. Percy, in his prize essay, entitled "An Inquiry on Alco- 
hol," speaks of having distilled pure alcohol from a deceased 
drunkard's brain. In a bound volume of the London Medical 
Times and Gazette of the year 1853, Dr. Albers gives an ac- 
count of the examination of the body of a drunkard twenty- 
four hours after death. He says he found " the convolutions 
of the brain of a pale yellow hue, the cerebral substance un- 
usually tough, the cerebral ganglia very small, the brain smelt 
like must, and half a drachm of rectified spirits was dis- 
tilled from it." Now, if the organ which is the seat of the 
mind is diseased, disordered, the mind is prevented from nat- 
ural, sane action. And so we find it. The drunken man can 
not think correctly or profoundly. The mental faculties are 
either numbed or crazed. But I may here be met with the idea 
that some of our greatest orators have been drunk when they 
made their greatest speeches. That may be so ; but do not 
permit yourselves to think that the thoughts which then came 
forth were born in a poisoned, disordered brain. They were cre- 
ated at previous sober moments, when the brain was clear and 
free and active, and were only recalled at the time of speaking. 
And it is not unreasonable, holding the theory we have ad- 
vanced, that men of remarkable memories should be enabled, 
even in a state of partial intoxication, to recall thoughts that 
had been produced with great effort, and deeply impressed on 
the mental perception. But we all know that, with the major- 
ity of men, when drunk, all the mental faculties, even including 
the memory, are sluggish, and almost blank. From this, may 
we not reasonably conclude that an habitual drunkard is not a 



THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY. 7 

proper person with whom to intrust business of any kind ? 
And this, I think, is the fact, as generally observed. 

Thomas Jefferson, at the close of his second term, declared, 
that if he were President again, he would involve a fourth 
in regard to every applicant for office, in addition to the 
three with which he had started out ; namely, " Is he honest ? 
is he capable ? and is he a friend of the Constitution ? " and 
the additional one would be, Is he in the habit of using ardent 
spirits? "And," said Mr. Jefferson, "if I should find that the 
applicant were in that habit, I would never appoint him to any 
office whatever ; for my sad experience and observation have 
taught me that such a man is not fit for public office." 

But, further, habitual intoxication not only produces inca- 
pacity for business, but frequently leads to permanent insanity. 
Go to our lunatic asylums, and you will find hundreds of rav- 
ing maniacs sent there for no other reason than that "alcohol," 
as Shakespeare has it, " had eaten out their brains." Dr. W. L 
Peck, Superintendent of the Central Ohio Lunatic Asylum, 
says, in a letter to myself, that the books of that institution 
show that at least ten per cent of the patients treated there 
were made insane directly by the use of alcoholic liquors. 

Lord Shaftsbury, in speaking from his own knowledge and 
experience, as Commissioner of Lunacy for the United King- 
dom of Great Britain for twenty years, says, "Fully six-tenths 
of all the cases of insanity to be found in these realms arise from 
the habit of intemperance in which the people have indulged." 

At a Permissive Bill meeting, held at Burdett Hall, in the 
city of London, the chair was occupied by Dr. Edward Moore, 
who stated, in his remarks on taking the chair, that at the last 
annual meeting of the Psychological Society of England, of 
which he was a member, he had made inquiries, of various gentle- 
men familiar with the statistics and treatment of insanity, as to 
the proportion of cases of that malady attributable to the use 
of intoxicating liquors, and all of them had given a very high 
percentage — some fifty, some seventy, and others even ninety 
per cent. 

Having briefly considered the physical and mental effects of 



8 THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY. 

alcohol upon society, we shall proceed to show its moral effects. 
As a man's body becomes diseased, by the frequent introduction 
of alcohol into the system, and the mind, on this account, 
ceases to perform its natural and noble functions, the baser and 
physical desires predominate over the higher and moral, and 
therefore we find associated with, and as a consequence of, 
intemperance, crime, lust, and loss of natural affection. 

First, then, it is a cause of crime. Alcohol is a narcotizer ; 
and, hence, the drunken man is very impressible. Every thing 
seems to him as in sleep, or under the influence of opium — in 
an unnatural, extravagant light. The most trifling provocation 
is the cause of a fight ; a word is taken as an insult, the clench 
of a fist as a blow. Macbeth could not think of murdering the 
noble Duncan, his friend, his benefactor, his kinsman, until his 
wife had mixed his drink ; and then, with brain all set on fire, 
with noiseless, stealthy tread, he staggered to the bed of the 
sleeping king, and plunged the dagger to his breast. And from 
that day to this, the murderers have been drunkards. 

Nearly all the men who fill the jails, and swing from the 
gallows, were drunk when they committed the deed that sen- 
tenced them to prison or to death. Tuiller, hung in 1868, at 
Wilkesbarre, Penn., for murder in the first degree, said, in his 
speech upon the gallows : " I have only a few words to say to you, 
my friends ; that is, to warn yon against the use of strong drink. 
You that indulge in it, take warning from to-day." Andrew 
Price, hung at Ironton, in this State, on April 2, 1869, said : " Be- 
fore I close, I wish to lift up my voice to warn young men of 
their dangers. Drinking-saloons and dens of infamy are multi- 
plying in our land, and thousands are being ruined every year. 
O, young men, beware, beware ! Whisky and bad company were 
the means of my ruin. If you are turning a deaf ear to the 
pulpit, will you not hear the gallows ?*' And with these words, 
he swung into eternity. 

But let us now listen to the testimony of those who have had 
extensive observation in criminal statistics. Judge Cady, of 
New York, aged eighty-four, declares that " the greater portion 
of the trials for murder, and assault and battery, that had been 



THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY. 9 

brought into court since his entrance upon the practice of law, 
originated in drunkenness." Judge Patterson, in addressing a 
grand jury, said, " If it were not for this drinking, you and I 
would have nothing to do." Judge Gurney once said, " Every 
crime has its origin, more or less, in drunkenness." Judge Cole- 
ridge, of England, says, " There is scarcely a crime that comes 
before me that is not caused, directly or indirectly, by strong 
drink." Judge Wightman, of the Queen's Bench, said, "I find, 
in every calendar that comes before me, one unfailing source, 
directly or indirectly, of most of the crimes committed— intern- 
pcranccr Lord Acton, Supreme Judge of Rome, says, "Nearly 
all the crimes of Rome originate in wine." Mr. Wakely, Cor- 
oner of Liverpool, says, "Gin may be thought to be the best 
friend I have ; for it causes me to hold at least one thousand 
more inquests annually than I would otherwise." The Rev. O. 
H. Newton, Chaplain of the Ohio Penitentiary, says that " seven- 
tenths of the men who come here for crime, are in the habit of 
using intoxicating drinks." The warden of the Massachusetts 
State-prison says, " During my eleven years' connection with 
this institution, twenty-one persons were imprisoned for killing 
their wives, two for killing their fathers, and one for killing his 
mother; and all these but one were habitual drunkards, and 
drunk when the crime was committed. These men," he adds, 
"were not bad men, except when under the influence of liquor." 
The Board of Metropolitan Police, Washington City, in a recent 
report to Congress, say, "We are fully impressed with the be- 
lief that the excessive use of intoxicating drink is the greatest 
evil to which communities are exposed ; for to it may be traced 
nearly all the cases of poverty, disease, and crime, public disor- 
der and moral degradation, which so afflict society." In the 
Twentieth Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the 
Prison Association of New York, it is said, "Of all the proxi- 
mate sources of crime, the use of intoxicating liquors is the 
most prolific and most deadly ; others slay their thousands, but 
this its tens of thousands." 

To more fully illustrate this point — for I regard it as a 
very important one in the argument — let me give you some 



10 THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY, 

statistics, to show the amount of crime annually committed in 

The Hon. E. D. Mansfield, several years ago. published some 
valuable statistics on this subject, so far as it concerned Ohio. 
He estimated that thirty per cent of all the crimes in this State 
are immediately due to intemperance. In 1867, out of 433 con- 
victions for crimes of violence, 267 were committed under the 
influence of liquor. The percentage of crimes not appearing 
in judicial returns is not included in this estimate. If it was 
iWe to get a full and fair computation, we would undoubt- 
ed that at least seventy-five per cent of all the crimes, 
outrages, and disorders of our State are traceable to intem- 
perance and the drunkard-maker's traffic. 

But let us widen our observation, so as to take in some of 
the great cities of the Union. The police of New York City 
make seventy thousand arrests in a year. In Philadelphia 
there are forty-one thousand arrests annually ; and in Chicago 
twenty-five thousand. And the large majority of all these are 
caused by intemperance. 

There are annually in the United States three hundred and 
eighty cases of suicide, seven hundred murders, one thousand 
three hundred and fifty rapes, four thousand robberies, four 
thousand cases of arson, one hundred thousand of larceny and 
theft, and nearly all these are committed by the slaves of King 
Alcohol. 

It is scarcely necessary that I should state to you — for every 
one who reads these pages knows, from his own observation — 
that intemperance is the great cause of lust in our land. The 
men who commit the rapes and adulteries, who support the 
brothels of the land, are chiefly those whom alcohol th un- 

natural passions, and over whom sober reason has lost its sway. 

But, further, ale ho ho I destroys the social affections. It so 
bestializes the man as to kill all the finer feelings of his na- 
ture, and render him incapable of discharging the tender duties 
of the domestic relation — incapable of being a father or a hus- 
band. He generally ceases to be the supporter of his family, 
and, unless the mother, with untiring industry, provides, with 



THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY. 1 1 

her own hands, for the necessities of the little ones, they all go 
down together to poverty and wretchedness. 

I saw a lovely couple stand at the hymeneal altar ; and as the 
man, with noble and athletic form, with mind that could grap- 
ple with the great questions of the day, with a soul pure as the 
sunlight, with a heart full of love to her who stood beside him, 
took the little hand in his, and in a manly voice declared that 
" long as they should live, he would love, honor, support, and 
comfort her," you would have thought that they were bound to- 
gether with a more than human tie. But he sought the poison- 
bowl, became a sot, forgot his vow, and dragged her who had 
buried her own name to take up his, who had deserted the 
home of father and mother to be the light and comfort of his, — 
with the blackened heart of a villain, he dragged her down to 
'the lowest depths of earthly misery, to be a drunkard y s wife. 

When the shades of night come on, I see the little chil- 
dren standing at the gate, waiting for papa to come home from 
work ; and, when they catch the first glimpse of his smiling 
face, they run to meet him with the evening kiss. And, when 
he comes in the house, and takes them on his knee, and tells a 
pretty story, or sings some sweet lullaby, it seems as if an 
angel had come in. But see the same father, three months 
later, as, staggering with maddened frenzy, he comes in the 
house, while the same little children, with trembling fear, run 
for protection to their mother's arms. O, no, no ! he is not the 
same father ; for alcohol has transformed him from a father to a 
tyrant, from a man to a beast. 

I once heard of a drunkard who, ceasing to work and thus 
obtain money to buy his liquor, sold off every article of house- 
hold furniture, piece by piece, until nothing was left but a little 
table. About this time, his baby-child died in its mother's 
arms ; and when the neighbors came, they laid out the little 
corpse upon the table. But the father, when the devilish appe- 
tite came on, pushed off the beautiful little body on to the bare 
floor, and carried off the table to pawn it for liquor. 

Some time ago, a man by the name of Weathers, near Louis- 
ville, Ky., coming home late at night, drunk, asked his little 



12 THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY. 

boy, a four-year-old, to spell a word which it was impossible for 
the child to do. Enraged at what he imagined to be disobedi- 
ence, he beat the child with a club till its whole body was lacer- 
ated with bleeding wounds, and then, not heeding the cries and 
screams of the little one, he held it over a hot fire, till the whole 
body was burned to a blister. And such things as these are tol- 
erated in this land, and no law enacted that shall prohibit the 
traffic in this liquid fire of hell. 

But this is not all. The effects of intemperance stop not with 
the drunkard ; they also injure the coming generation. An ap- 
petite for strong drink is transmitted from parent to child. This 
has been known and observed since the times of Plutarch and 
Aristotle. Plutarch says, " One drunkard begets another." 
Aristotle observed, u Drunken women bring forth drunken 
children." 

Dr. Elam, of London, in a work recently published, entitled 
" Physicians' Problems," discusses, incidentally, the subject of 
Oinomania. u I assert that this disease is almost as well and 
characteristically marked, in its psychological aspects, as small- 
pox is in its physical ; that it is hereditary, and that its victims 
unjustly crowd our criminal assemblies. . . . The in- 
stincts of an oinomaniac seem to be as violent, and as little 
under control from the intellect or will, as that of a carnivorous 
animal when it tastes blood. The alcohol poison acts, as any 
careful observer must have noted, as rapidly upon the will as 
upon the blood and stomach." 

Every authority upon the subject coincides in the opinion that 
the habit of moderate drinking, as well as excessive drunken- 
ness, in the parent, manifests itself invariably in the child in 
oinomania, or in epileptic or insane tendencies. I have known 
of cases where the grandfather was living, a vigorous old tansy- 
bitters advocate, while the children and grandchildren, in spite 
of moral and religious training, had gone down to the drunkard's 
grave. " Moderate drinking," says an eminent authority on dis- 
eases of the brain, " sometimes produces, in one or more of the 
children of the person thus indulging, only a simple neuropathy, 
or a vicious and defective organization ; but these, when due to 



THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY. 1 3 

such an origin, are capable of giving rise, in the next or third 
generation, to affections of the mind of the gravest character." 

The superintendent of the Ohio Lunatic Asylum recently said 
that " a citizen of this State married an intelligent lady, who bore 
him ten children. After the birth of the first three, the father 
became intemperate, and during his career as an inebriate four 
children were born to him ; he then reformed entirely, and had 
three others. The first three and last three were smart and in- 
telligent, and became useful men and women ; of the four born 
during his inebriety, two have died in the lunatic asylum, one is 
there to-day, and the fourth is an idiot." In the idiotic asylums 
of England and Wales, there are two hundred inmates, and 
one hundred and forty-five of these had drunkards for their 
parents." 

When we think of these things, we are not surprised that the 
people in the Principality of Waldeck, in Germany, should have 
passed a law refusing to grant license to marry to any man in 
the habit of getting drunk. And if a similar law were enacted 
by the Congress of these United States, thousands of women and 
children would be saved from lives of degradation and misery. 

Permit me next to consider the financial effects of alcohol 
upon society. 

Drunkenness is a producer of poverty. Let the father be a 
drunkard, and elegant homes are soon exchanged for hovels of 
misery, well-dressed and happy children soon go begging in 

rags. Ten years ago, Thomas C was an industrious and 

highly respected citizen of my native town, and worth, it was 
thought, about ten thousand dollars ; but he drank it up. 
To-day, poor, half-blind, rheumatic, he drives a dray through the 
streets of Delaware ; while the man who got his money, fat, 
lazy, gouty, draws the interest on his gold-bearing bonds. 

It takes but a few years of intemperance for the intelligent 
rich man to change places with the ignorant rumseller. And 
while the illiterate rumseller may be sitting at ease in the costly 
mansion, the educated drunkard grooms the horses in the stable. 
And such a change of property is injurious to society. It is 
not a change of property gained by labor ; and those which are 



14 THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY. 

secured by labor are the only ones beneficial to the business of society. 
In fact, there is no labor at all in this kind of a transaction. 
It is really a cutter- off of labor. One of the parties to the 
transaction — the drunkard — is made by it unfit, more or less, 
for real labor ; while the other — the rumseller — is prevented by 
his patrons from engaging in any honorable manual or mental 
labor. 

But these are not all the bad financial effects that we may 
discover in the transaction. The money is usually and pri- 
marily taken out of the hands of a man who, by mental capac- 
ity and moral education, is able to spend it properly, to specu- 
late wisely, and donate beneficently, and put into the hands 
of a man who, by rudeness of education, by lack of mental 
and moral worth, and lack of sympathy with benevolent enter- 
prises, is totally unfitted for its possession and distribution. 
And, according to the last report of Ex-Commissioner Wells, 
fifteen hundred millions of dollars change hands in this way in 
our own country every year. 

The financial effects of alcohol upon the country are further 
to be seen in the fact that every-where the people are heavily 
taxed for the maintenance of lunatic asylums, idiotic asylums, 
prisons, penitentiaries, and poor-houses, of any of which we 
would have little need if we had no intemperance. That you 
may get an idea of the amount of taxation we often pay for 
such purposes, let me give you an item which I clipped, some 
time ago, from the South-Bend (Ind.) Register: "Some thirty 
years ago, Jonathan Beckwith, a young lawyer of decided prom- 
ise, bought a pint of whisky, and, getting drunk, wandered out 
on the Terra Coupee Prairie, one cold Winter night, and was so 
badly frozen that he lost his reason and the use of his limbs, 
and has been ever since, until his death, two weeks ago, an 
inmate of the county poor-house, an insane cripple. His keep- 
ing during this time has cost the county no less than eight 
thousand dollars." 

This is the startling amount that the people are frequently 
taxed to pay, in order that one man may pocket a few cents 
profit on a pint of whisky. Pennsylvania has a criminal and 



THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY. 1 5 

pauper population of twenty-four thousand and four — nine- 
tenths of these from intemperance, and maintained at a cost of 
two million two hundred and fifty-nine thousand nine hundred 
and ten dollars and sixty-six cents, or five dollars and eighty 
cents for every voter in the State. The State revenue for license 
is three hundred and seventeen thousand seven hundred and 
forty-two dollars and seventy-five cents ; while the cost for sup- 
porting intemperate criminals and paupers is two million two 
hundred and fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and ten dollars 
and sixty-six cents. 

May I ask your attention to one more statement ? It has 
been estimated that two hundred thousand orphans of drunkards 
are annually bequeathed to the public charities of the people of 
the United States. This is the great host that the State is 
bound to maintain through infancy and childhood, because their 
drunken parents die prematurely, without having accumulated 
any property to leave for their maintenance. 

Perhaps we have continued the argument to sufficient length. 
Let us now recapitulate. [The use of alcoholic liquors is, — 

First, a physical evil ; affecting the capacity for physical 
labor, and shortening the physical life. 

Second, it is a mental evil ; affecting the capacity for mental 
labor, and often dethroning the reason itself. 

Third, it is a moral evil ; producing a large proportion of the 
crimes of every land. 

Fourth, it is a domestic evil ; so destroying the affections as 
to render one incapable of discharging the tender duties of the 
conjugal and parental relations. 

Fifth, it is a propagating evil ; transmitting to coming gen- 
erations an appetite for strong drink, and frequently entailing 
mental weakness and imbecility. 

Sixth, it is an impoverishing evil ; affecting not only those 
who indulge in it, and their families, but also the State itself. 

But if the argument I have made is correct, it is capable of 
being confirmed. Let me cite you to some instances where the 
sale of intoxicating liquors has been prohibited, and show you 
the result. 



l6 THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY. 

In the county of Tyrone, Ireland, are five town-lands under 
the agency of the vice-president of the Temperance League. 
Their united area is fifty-five square miles, and population nine 
thousand. Before the extinction of public houses where intoxi- 
cating liquors were sold, there were police-barracks, and the 
poor-rate was one shilling and four-pence in the pound ; since 
their extinction, the police-barracks have been removed — for it 
was found there was no need of them — and the poor-rate has 
fallen to five-pence to six-pence in the pound, while it still remains 
at one shilling to one shilling six-pence in the pound in the ad- 
joining town-lands of the same county. In the year in which 
the law was enacted closing the liquor-shops on Sabbath 
throughout Scotland, a bill was, at the same session of Parlia- 
ment, passed in behalf of the municipal authorities of Edin- 
burgh, to enable them to raise and charge on the inhabitants of 
that city the sum of twelve thousand pounds for enlarging the 
jail, which had been found greatly insufficient for the number 
of offenders in that locality. In a few weeks after the closing 
of the liquor-shops on Sunday, the number of criminals was re- 
duced one-third, and the criminality of the people continued so 
perceptibly to diminish that the authorities finally gave up all 
idea of enlarging the jail ; and to this day not a penny of the 
twelve thousand pounds has been raised, and no necessity has 
ever demanded a larger jail. 

Some quarter of a century ago, a few citizens of New Brain- 
tree, Mass., determined that they would banish intoxicating drinks 
from their community. To make the enterprise sure, the citizens 
subscribed a sum of seven thousand dollars, built a temperance 
hotel, and employed a landlord to run it rent-free. A correspond- 
ent of the New York Evening Post, going to that quiet, thrifty 
town, not long ago, says that the stage-driver spoke to him as 
they passed the poor-house farm, and said : 

" There is a funny place." 

" Why so ?'' asked the correspondent. 

" Because it is the poor-house farm, and there is not a pauper 
in it ; and I suppose the reason is, that some thirty years ago a 
temperance tavern was started here, no liquors have been sold 



THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON SOCIETY. 17 

since, and there is no drinking nor drunkenness, and not a pauper 
in the town." 

In the State of New Jersey, there is a city of ten thousand 
inhabitants, called Vineland, where no grog-shops or licensed 
liquor-saloons are tolerated. During the entire year, there has 
been but one indictment, and that a trifling case of assault and 
battery ; they have no city debt, and their taxes are only one 
per cent on the valuation ; their police expenses are seventy-five 
dollars a year, and poor expenses about ten dollars a year. This, 
remember, in a city of ten thousand inhabitants, and all this 
because there is no liquor there. 

And I think we have every reason to believe that, if we should 
abolish alcohol from our land, our prisons and jails would soon be 
emptied, lunatic asylums, idiotic asylums, orphan asylums, poor- 
houses would be almost unknown, the rate of taxation would be 
greatly diminished, the pecuniary, the physical, the mental, the 
moral wealth of the community would be greatly augmented , 
and prosperity and happiness would reign in triumph over all. 



An Appeal to Young I 



Young Gentlemen, — You are the hope of future years. 
You are to be the pillars of both Church and State when the 
men who now bear the toils and cares of the nation lie silent in 
the grave. It is, therefore, your duty to mankind, to your coun- 
try, and to God, to prepare yourselves as best you can for these 
great and responsible positions. Let me tell you that one of 
the best qualifications you can have is abstinence from intoxi- 
cating drink. I can think of no better way to impress you 
with this truth than to picture a drunkard's life, and thus show 
how uncalculated he is to discharge any important duty. 

'Tis a cold, dark Winter night. The moon is hid ; not a star 
is seen. A chilling blast is wailing ; all decent families are 
sleeping in their quiet homes ; but there goes the drunkard. 
He has just been put forth from a grog-shop, and he is now 
staggering his way homeward. He comes to the little cabin, 
lifts the latch, and enters. But what does he behold ? A well- 
ordered house, and happy family ? Ah, no ! There, in one corner 
of the cold room, upon a rough, wooden bench, sits his half- 
starved, half-frozen wife ; by her side is a rude cradle, and in it 
an infant cold in death. In another corner lies a little boy, 
clad in rags, upon whose face but yesterday there sparkled two 
bright, blue eyes, and on his cheeks did bloom the blush of 
youth ; but now all signs of life are gone. 

The drunkard hears a voice — 't is his wife's : " Charles, be- 
hold what a drunkard's life has led you to ! You have killed 
your children, and almost murdered your wife." 

When we look at this picture, we are constrained to cry, 
" Who hath woe, who hath sorrow," more than " they that 
tarry long at the wine ?" 



AN APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN. 1 9 

" O, when we swallow down 
* Intoxicating wine, we drink damnation. 

Naked we stand, the sport of mocking fiends, 
Who grin to see our noble nature vanquished, 
Subdued to beasts." 

We see the drunkard again. Appetite calls ; he yields ; and, 
leaving his home, soon arrives at the grog-shop. Once more 
he drinks the intoxicating cup ; soon his eyes are inflamed, and 
his mind beclouded. In this state he insults a friend ; a con- 
test comes on, in which the latter is master, and the former 
lies bleeding on the floor. 

When we see this picture, we may exclaim, " Who hath con- 
tentions, who hath babbling, who hath wounds without cause, 
who hath redness of eyes," more than " they that go to seek 
mixed wine ?" 

11 In the embattled plain, 
Though death exults and claps his raven wings, 
Yet reigns he not even there so absolute, 
So merciless, as in yon frantic scenes 
Of midnight revel and tumultuous mirth, 
Where, in the intoxicating draught concealed, 
He snares the simple youth, who, naught suspecting, 
Means to be blest, but finds himself undone." 

We see the drunkard again. Now the delirium tremens is 
upon him ; there he lies, in terrible agonies of death. He sees 
vile forms of reptiles upon the wall, devils frown upon him as 
they walk about the room, serpents drag their slimy forms 
along his limbs, vipers fill his boots, adders sting his breast ; 
all the torments of hell are fastened on him. When we see 
this picture, we are compelled to say, "At last it biteth like a 
serpent, and stingeth like an adder." 

He dies ; but no angels come from heaven to bear his de- 
parting spirit to the bosom of his God. The remains are 
placed in a rude wooden box, and borne in a cart to the pau- 
pers' grave-yard. Near by are three new-made graves, and in 
them lie a starved and frozen family. Now his corpse is low- 
ered to its final resting-place. No mourning family come to 
weep o'er the place ; no sorrowing nation pays him honor at 



20 AN APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN. 

his burial ; no seraph voices chant sweet music at his funeral ; 
but he goes 

" Down to the dust from which he sprung, 
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung." 

No lofty monument will be lifted ; no tall, green grass shall 
wave ; no weeping-willow bend her boughs ; no friendly hand 
shall plant a rose to bloom on the spot where he sleeps. 

Twelve years ago, that man graduated from an Eastern uni- 
versity ; he stood first in his class. Two years later he was 
married to an accomplished young lady, was admitted to the 
bar, and for several years had great success as a lawyer. But 
when a student at college, he occasionally took a glass of wine 
with a friend ; thus he acquired an appetite for stronger drink. 
It grew upon him, until finally it dragged him, a victim, to the 
grave. 

Young gentlemen, do you wish such to be your fate ? If 
you do not, hearken to the voice of inspiration, "Look not thou 
upon the wine when it is red : . . . for at last it biteth like 
a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Then vow to God in 
your minds, this hour, that never, as long as he shall give you 
life, will you touch, taste, handle, or look upon the intoxicating 
cup. Say, in the beautiful language of the poet : 

" Thou sparkling bowl ! Thou sparkling bowl ! 

Though bards thy brim may press, 
And eyes of beauty o'er thee roll, 

And song, and dance, thy power confess, 
I will not touch thee ; for there clings 
A scorpion at thy side that stings." 



Yes 



"Memory confused, interrupted thought, 
Death s harbingers, lie latent in the draught ; 
And in the flowers that wreathe the sparkling bowl, 
Fell adders hiss, and poisonous serpents roll." 



A Few Words on Prohibition. 



All of my readers will agree in the statement that intem- 
perance is the greatest and most growing evit in our land 
and all will concede that some means should be devised to stop its 
onward and devastating progress ; but many of us differ as to 
whether the best and most appropriate way of securing this 
desirable end is by political action. 

First, there are those who are radically opposed to any po- 
litical action on the subject. They say we should seek to ac- 
complish the needed temperance reform through the Church, 
the temperance organizations, and by the means of moral sua- 
sion. This is the old and original way of working in the cause 
of temperance, and it has been the source of much good. 
When a man is brought into the pale of the Church ; when 
there is thrown around him the influence and example of a 
Christian brotherhood ; when he attends with regularity upon 
all the means of grace ; when the Holy Spirit dwells in his 
heart, and the love of God prompts every action of his soul 
he will undoubtedly be a temperance man. 

When one is taken into a temperance organization, is made 
to take an oath to forever abstain from the manufacture, sale, 
and use of intoxicating liquors, if he has any sense of honor, 
he will be a temperance man. I do not seek to depreciate the 
good influence which the Church and the various temperance 
organizations have had in the temperance cause. They have 
done great good ; they have saved many a man from a crim- 
inal's cell and a drunkard's grave, and many a family from 
coming to poverty and want. I can scarcely conceive to what 
depths of degradation this land would have been sunk had it 
not been for these fountains of purity continually pouring forth 
their waters. 



22 A FEW WORDS OX PROHIBITION. 

But, let me ask you, has there been any permanent decrease* 
in the sale and use of intoxicating liquors since the time the 
first Church and first temperance organization were planted in 
America, taking into consideration, of course, the increase in 
population during that time ? On the other hand, the facts 
show that the sale and use of intoxicating liquors has increased 
in a far greater ratio than the population of the land. 

It is evident that something more must be done. Something 
external and material must be brought in, to act in conjunction 
with the spiritual arm of the Church, and with the persuasive 
arm of the temperance organizations ; and what else shall it 
be unless the strong arm of the law ? We get our law through 
our representatives in legislative bodies ; we compel them to 
enact laws in accordance with the principles and ideas ex- 
pressed in the platforms upon which they run. If we desire 
temperance lams, we must have tempera?ice platforms. 

Political action is the only kind of action in which all tem- 
perance men can unite, and it is only by united effort that 
the evil can be crushed. You can 't get all the temperance 
men in a community to join the Church, or to connect them- 
selves with temperance organizations ; but when you put the 
matter into politics every man has a vote, a voice, and an 
interest. 

Intemperance is not only a moral but eminently a political 
evil. It decreases the population of the land, by hurrying off 
to premature graves sixty thousand inhabitants annually ; it 
diminishes the working power of the country, by making one 
hundred thousand new drunkards every year, who are incapaci- 
tated, more or less, thereby for physical and mental labor. It in- 
creases the crime of the country.! It increases the taxes, by 

* X. B. This women's war against alcohol — God bless the noble and brave Christian 
women : — is a glorious thing ; and yet I fear the effects of it will not generally be per- 
manent I doubt if the majority of the reformed rumsellers remain out of their old 
occupations many months. The business is so profitable, requires so little work, 
and such a small capital, that they can 't resist the temptation of entering it again, 
unless we s. ?t permit you to engage in such a business, and it will 

fine you and take away your property if you do. 

f See page S, •' Essay on the Effects of Alcohol Upon Society."' 



A FEW WORDS ON PROHIBITION. 23 

compelling the erection of prisons, hospitals, homes for the 
abandoned, inebriate, lunatic, idiotic asylums, etc. Such an evil 
is a political evil, and action should be taken by the State to 
suppress it. 

What better temperance platform than that of prohibition? 
If your right-hand ofTends you, cut it off, and it will offend you 
no more. If intoxicating liquors injure the people, stop their 
manufacture and sale, and drunkenness will cease. Alcohol — 
the pure, rectified spirits — is necessary to the pharmaceutist, in 
preparing tinctures and extracts. We would not take it from 
the hands of the physician, if it is of any service in the practice 
of his profession ; but we would totally and forever prohibit its 
manufacture and sale as an intoxicating beverage. 

I have frequently heard it said by some of my excellent fellow- 
townsmen, " I do not deem such a movement necessary ; the law 
of Ohio is good enough as it is." In reply I have to say, that the 
Liquor Law of Ohio, though it fines the drunkard, and, to some 
extent, restrains the sale of intoxicating liquors, is not calculated 
to diminish, in any considerable degree, the drinking and drunk- 
enness of the State. It prohibits the sale of intoxicating 
liquors to be drank on or about the premises where sold. And 
yet, under the term intoxicating liquors, it excepts ale, beer, and 
wine manufactured from the native grape. You can drink 
wine, ale, and beer in the dram-shop just as long as you 
please — the law won't touch you. And you can buy just as 
much whisky, rum, or brandy as you want at the liquor-saloon, 
provided you do n't drink it at the place where you bought. 
You can drink it on the street, in the public eye, in your own 
parlor, before your children, at your place of business — any- 
where but at the place where you bought it. 

This law prohibits the sale of liquor to persons in the habit 
of getting drunk, and yet does not define how much, or how reg- 
ularly, or how often a man must get drunk in order to be deemed 
an habitual drunkard. And many a shirk from justice has been 
made under this enactment. The Ohio law fines a man if he 
gets drunk, and yet permits him to drink as much as he wants 
if he do n't get drunk, and thus encourages him to be a 



24 A FEW WORDS ON PROHIBITION. 

drunkard. Such a law, carried out to its strictest letter, can 
never accomplish the end desired, — a moral reformation on the 
subject. 

What we want in this and in every State of our Union, is a 
law that shall strike at the root of the evil, and prohibit the sale 
altogether of every kind of intoxicating liquors. And I sincerely 
hope the day is not far distant when one of the great polit- 
ical parties of the land shall espouse this cause, and, inscribing 
Prohibition on its banners, go forward to a glorious victory. 



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